Sara Quinn Rivara
CONFESSION
What did I know of loss
though I had stocked
my life with it:
a husband who hated me
nights in the fishing cabin
beneath a shallow sky
a poker game and porn
on the living room television
while I slept off a fever
empty beer bottles
on dirty tables.
Sex meant leaving
a body I hated
for its insistence on existing.
A curdle of blood
on the crotch
of my new lace panties
my husband bought
at Frederick’s of Hollywood
so I would transform
into something more fuckable.
Still, how I hated that word
panties, how a man
can claim anything:
a tree for felling
a woman’s small shoulders
beneath his hands, the horizon
he could tie into a noose
or unfurl into a road.
How can you lose
what you never believed
you deserved? the self
is an abandoned orchard,
windfall apples fermenting
in the late August sun.
I did not understand
until long after
that I too
was a song
worth
singing.